The A Spot

If it’s Teresa’s tendency to geek out over cool new tools, it’s probably mine to get lost down the rabbit hole of overthinking theories and abstract ideas. Today’s post is a prime example, but a blog is a blog, and since this is what I’ve been thinking about with respect to advocacy this past week, I’m putting those thoughts down as best I can.

Karl Maria von Clausewitz famously opined that war is “merely the continuation of politics by other means.” Put a different way, we might say that war — or violence — is advocacy taken to its illogical extreme. Our definition of advocacy up in the sidebar over there is “developing a passion for something and doing everything you can to make it happen.” It’s that “everything” that I’m picking at today. The Hutus of Rwanda were passionate that Tutsis should no longer exist, and they were truly willing to do everything to see that happen. Osama bin Laden and the followers of al Qaeda were passionate about striking a blow against the liberal, secular democracy that the United States represents; they were willing to everything, or anything, to do that. President Bush was passionate about removing Saddam Hussein from power for his (purported) role in supporting al Qaeda, and perhaps also passionate about bringing stable democracy to the Middle East. Whatever your opinion of the war in Iraq, few would question the President’s willingness to use any means available to accomplish his goals.

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There is alot of buzz (some deserved and some not) about the potential of web 2.0 to revolutionize how we reach out to supporters and mobilize them around certain issues. As great as all that is it helps to understand how social networks - live, breath, eat, grow - and you cannot always see that with a web-based tool.

The folks with Net-Map have put together a great, resource rich, website to help folks understand and use Net-Map: Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. Relying on pens, paper, colored tags, stackable pieces you can create sophisticated network maps which help you better understand the network you are trying to influence. (more…)

As many of us know, one of the challenges advocates often face abroad (if not in the U.S. as well!) is a lack of receptiveness among government bureaucrats to the participation of citizens in public administration.    In Ukraine, as one example, government has not historically been of the people, by the people, and for the people.  Cabinet Ministries whose ostensible purpose is to provide social services have no experience with treating citizens as clients – on the contrary, citizens are often nothing more than problems, flies in the ointment.  Government bodies and processes are not designed to be transparent, but obscure and invisible to outsiders, discouraging or preventing interference. 

Getting government to take citizens seriously requires a significant change in mindset, as well as a whole host of skills and tools unfamiliar to career officials.  Despite the challenges, over the last couple of days in Kyiv I’ve seen some real and exciting opportunities for change.

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(Or, the story of how one activist motivated an apathetic, apolitical citizen (me!) ) by A Spot Guest Blogger Gretchen Elias

My roommate, Jess, works for Toxics Action Center, a nonprofit spin-off of the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). The PIRG is a nationwide advocacy organization with a network of affiliated nonprofits in nearly every state. Jess has been working there for the past two years as a community organizer, providing coaching, mentoring, and advice to citizens fighting toxic pollution in their communities.

Right now, Jess is working with a Vermont-wide campaign, Safe Power VT , to shut down Vermont Yankee (pictured above, during a cooling tower collapse in 2007), a decades-old nuclear power plant in southern Vermont. It’s going to be a tough battle. The nuke plant has a powerful lobby on its side, along with some effective media coverage portraying the plant as a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly way to produce energy. Of course, the citizens groups that Jess advises feel differently—and in my opinion, the facts are in their favor. But to beat the nuke lobbyists and convince the legislature to move forward with shutting down Vermont Yankee, they will first have to convince a heck of a lot of ordinary citizens across Vermont.

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April 4th, as you all know, marked the 40th anniversary of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, assassination. Taylor Branch’s April 6th NYT editorial “The Last Wish of Martin Luther King” offers up some interesting insights and lessons we can learn from one of the greatest advocates of the 20th Century. There’s little I can add.